Not scary, except to Republicans:
President Biden today voted early in Wilmington, Delaware in the 2022 midterm elections along with his granddaughter Natalie, a first-time voter. https://t.co/LOziruGoFR pic.twitter.com/EtEGnlTLpl
— Craig Caplan (@CraigCaplan) October 29, 2022
talking to reporters after voting, Biden describes the big lie as "malarkey" and says of right wing rhetoric's role in the Pelosi attack, "this talk produces the violence" pic.twitter.com/qHAvitDEPi
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) October 29, 2022
Biden, who has drawn a line from Charlottesville to Jan. 6 in the past, draws a line from Jan. 6 to the attack on Pelosi’s husband in search of her: https://t.co/mLUUEUQth5
— Edward-Isaac Dovere (@IsaacDovere) October 29, 2022
Look folks, suburban women are turned on and turning out to vote in PA after tonight. pic.twitter.com/5QTwpTP0Db
— Dark Brandon (@VoteDarkBrandon) October 29, 2022
Great news! (assuming it can be enforced, yes; but Lula’s win is no small thing, given the state-sanctioned violence against voters):
always love to see dysfunctional, diverse democracies reject right-wing idiocy https://t.co/BGXmLVyq98
— chatham harrison is tending his garden (@chathamharrison) October 30, 2022
it’s only strange if you haven’t updated your priors in the last two decades https://t.co/hyMHrvrr2q
— ??GHOULLIKEHELLMACHINE?? (@golikehellmachi) October 30, 2022
An unexpected consensus has emerged: Democrats are effectively telling voters, "Republicans intend to destabilize the economy on purpose."
And many Republicans are effectively responding, "Yes, that really is our plan." (via @MaddowBlog) https://t.co/w8O8xgJV0x
— MSNBC (@MSNBC) October 29, 2022
Biden spent significant political capital going up on stage and spelling out exactly how the right-wing MAGA coalition is fueling extremist violence and explicitly denouncing it…
…and not only did *no network pick it up live*, but Republicans got *weeks* of *this shit*. pic.twitter.com/VUyPKT3RQJ
— Michael Paulauski (@mike10010100) October 29, 2022
What a great thought. Why didn't they ever think of that before? https://t.co/tIre6KUduf pic.twitter.com/hDe4C8QFlF
— Centrism Fan Acct ?? (@Wilson__Valdez) October 29, 2022
Keep this in mind: most of the prognosticators & the people w predictive models & the journalists who are certain it will be a Republican romp are 25-50 y/o white dudes
Maybe they’re all correct! But that’s not the first demographic you’d look to for intellectual humility.
— Dana Houle (@DanaHoule) October 31, 2022
2liberal
Good morning. I am hoping the polls are all junk and we will see a “what’s right about Kansas” voter response to the extremist Rethuglican agenda when the time comes next week.
Baud
But Lula is old!
Baud
@2liberal:
🤞
Baud
When was the last coup attempt that we attempted to influence?
ETA: Maybe Libya and Syria. Not really coup attempts per se, but close enough.
Jackie
@2liberal: Even pollsters are qualifying their polls with an asterisk.
evap
I realized recently that I am constantly anxious these days. I just wish the damn election were over. The worst part is that we probably won’t know much on election night.
rikyrah
Good Morning, Everyone😊😊😊
Baud
@Jackie:
* Paid for by the Republican National Committee.
Baud
@rikyrah:
Good morning.
Baud
@evap: You’re not alone.
rikyrah
@evap:
Me too😔😔
Geminid
Nice to see Michael Paulauski featured in a post.
He’s a good follow. A self-described “DemSoc liking anarchy, Antifascist,” Paulauski terrorizes “Tankies” and demolishes “Do Somethings.”
Amir Khalid
Here is the ugliest video I’ve seen in a while: a TikTok video of a man vandalising a festive Deepavali/Diwali sand painting, a kolam, in the lobby of a private hospital. The asshole is formally dressed in a baju Melayu, which tells me that he’s Muslim, and that the video was likely shot on Friday. As the reporter’s voice-over notes, he and the giggling twit who shot the video are in police custody.
mrmoshpotato
!!!!!!!!!!!
Viva Brasil!
mrmoshpotato
And if you haven’t had your head up your ass for the past 40+ years, you know it’s damn true.
lowtechcyclist
He’s being canceled!! The RWNJs ought to be outraged! (Yeah, riiiiight.)
I don’t watch much TV, so correct me if I’m wrong, but didn’t the nets used to put Trump on TV at the drop of a hat when he was President?
mrmoshpotato
@Jackie:
*Don’t slap us around a bit with a large trout if we look like idiots come November 9th.
Betty Cracker
I get Centrism Fan’s point — Biden has done a great job of calling out Republican lies and destabilization, and we absolutely should acknowledge that. But Corn isn’t wrong either, and I’m not sure dunking on him is productive. Sometimes I think various Dem factions spend so much time ripping each other that they lose focus on what’s important.
Here’s what’s important: rightwing nutjobs inspired by Trump’s lies have tried to assassinate the Speaker of the House twice inside of two years.
lowtechcyclist
@mrmoshpotato:
Oh nonsense, it’s only been since 2011.
Before then, they wanted to make the economy work great for rich people, and didn’t give a damn how it worked for everyone else.
But since 2011, they’ve been willing to sink it for everyone if they don’t get their way.
I suspect the rich folks still haven’t caught on that the leopards might eat their faces one of these days. They probably won’t, either, until it actually happens.
Baud
@Betty Cracker:
For me, the problem is that Dems are addicted to advice giving. It across the ideological spectrum, and the constant drumbeat of it is enervating. YMMV.
mrmoshpotato
@lowtechcyclist:
LOL!
Even before Dump “won” the election. TV stations loved jerking it to some empty Dump podium, even if another candidate was giving a speech at the time.
Matt McIrvin
@Baud: I recall all kinds of claims that the US played some kind of nefarious role in the 2009 Honduras coup, though it was more tacit acceptance than somehow pulling the trigger.
(And it was mostly framed as attacks on Hillary Clinton, which makes it hard to tell what substance was really there.)
Baud
@Matt McIrvin:
Yeah, I remember it as anti-Hillary propaganda.
Geminid
@Geminid: I blew Paulauski’s self-description. Again. He says he’s “DemSoc liking anarchism,” not anarchy. I think what he means is that within the wider democratic socialist movement he favors building democratic socialism from the ground up, as opposed to having it imposed by the state.
Paulauski’s a pragmatist and he’s a solid supporter of the Democratic Party.
Baud
@Geminid:
No, read it again. He’s a DemSoc liking arachnids. Just really into spiders.
Matt McIrvin
@Baud: Actually, the answer is that the United States attempted to influence the coup attempt in the United States on January 6, 2021.
Spanky
@Betty Cracker: A minor correction: Only one of the two murder attempts was by a nutjob. The other was as part of a plotted coup attempt. Many are culpable in that attempt.
Baud
@Baud:
It across = It exists across
Baud
@Matt McIrvin:
Good point.
Cacti
Bolsonaro has not conceded or made any public statement yet to the best of my knowledge.
I see his final months playing out in a few possible ways:
Betty Cracker
@Baud: Well, there’s constructive advice, and there’s destructive criticism cloaked as advice, e.g., “do this obvious thing, you fucking idiots.” Corn was offering constructive advice, IMO, which didn’t merit sarcastic dunking. Sarcastic dunking is CFA’s shtick, and I find that shtick amusing most of the time because it’s aimed at people who are acting in bad faith. I don’t think Corn was.
Geminid
@Betty Cracker: I’m not sure this is factional, despite the “Centrism” in Fan Account’s handle and Corn working for Mother Jones. Its more just pushing back at the backseat drivers won’t stop telling officials how to steer. These folks do tend to be on the more liberal side of the spectrum, but plenty of others in that cohort find more constructive work than telling the drivers how to do it.
brantl
@lowtechcyclist: Hosehockey, they’ve known rigging it for the rich screws everybody else, the whole f*ing time, since The Big Dick, at least.
Betty Cracker
@Spanky: This might be a semantics issue. I agree there was a formal plot in the 1/6 assassination attempt, but the boots on the ground — the people who would have carried out the assassination if they’d succeeded in getting to the Speaker — were also rightwing nutjobs. It’s probably fair to call the people in suits who fomented the coup “rightwing nutjobs,” including those who are elected officials, depending on how you define the term.
Ocotillo
@Betty Cracker: Agreed.
There is nothing wrong with repetition. Even tangerine Mussolini gives the same speech at his rallies all the time.
Biden should give another speech about it.
lowtechcyclist
@Betty Cracker:
But it did seem that Corn was advising Biden to do the very thing he’d just done. I can understand the dunk, because Lord knows a lot of people who should know better are always advising the Dems to do things that they’re already doing or have done, but it just didn’t get much media play.
I continue to believe we need at least one genuinely left-of-center cable TV channel, daily newspaper, or what have you. It doesn’t need to be a lefty equivalent of Fox News, in fact that’s the last thing we need.
But it could report the news without bothsidesing it, it could give serious coverage to the things we would like to see get covered, it could ask the questions of Republican politicians that it never seems the mainstream media ask of them (like this big wave of antisemitic stuff lately: have any GOP pols denounced it? have any reporters asked them for a statement about it?). There’s plenty of room for a newspaper or cable TV channel to be what the MSM ought to be, but doesn’t come remotely close.
mrmoshpotato
@brantl:
Tell us more about this game. :)
Princess
“Right wing nut-job” has become redundant.
Betty Cracker
@Geminid: Do you view Corn’s tweet as backseat driving? He’s a political commentator reacting to what should be considered a seismic political event. He didn’t say Biden never calls out Republicans (as some critics did — dunk on them!). He’s saying narratives require repetition to take hold and that when events illustrate the truth of a narrative, that’s the right time to reinforce it.
Geminid
@Ocotillo: Biden and his advisors might be considering a speech on this issue. He already made some very strong remarks at a party event in Pennsylvania, on Friday I believe, that were reported in national media. That, and talking about right wing violenceforcefully at more events might be as good as a major speech which I suspect would not get major coverage.
I think there is a question here of which issues can bring out the most voters, and maybe turn a few. Pounding the Republicans’ plans to sunset Social Security and take womens’ health back to 19th century might be better uses of finite messaging bandwidth.
Suzanne
@Betty Cracker:
Yes, this is true. I suspect that it is because:
1) Dems try to differentiate themselves by being “smarter”, aka “coming up with the hottest take”, and
2) Rational people generally want to have rational adversaries (and all rational relationships), and since there are none to be found on that side, they pick fights with one another.
Baud
@Suzanne:
God, that’s so wrong. I’m embarrassed for you.
Baud
@Betty Cracker:
One person’s constructive advice is someone else’s bad advice. The whole system has become unhelpful IMHO.
Geminid
@Betty Cracker: Well, Corn was posing the question in what seems an open minded way. If I followed him on Twitter I might have answered similarly to the way I did above (but in 280 characters or less).
I guess I’d tell him that he might be overestimating the impact of a “major speech” on this issue, and that I thought voters are best motivated by emphasizing threats to Social Security and women’s rights. And that I thought that if he’s going raise this messaging question he should at least also recount Biden’s remarks in Pennsylvania and ask if those and more statements like them are sufficient.
I’m not saying that rightwing violence is not of major importance, just that in a practical political sense other issues may be even better lines of attack.
Dorothy A. Winsor
Today’s NYT/Siena poll results looked good for the Senate.
PA: D+6 (poll taken before debate)
AZ: D+6
NV: Tied
GA: D+3
Baud
The other problem with our culture of advice giving is the often overwrought reaction when the advice is followed.
Kay
Kanye West is endorsing Walker in the GA Senate race.
The thing about our “bold contrarians” (West, Greenwald, Gabbard, Taibbi, Bari Weiss) is they are indistinguishable from ordinary members of the GOP base.
Baud
@Dorothy A. Winsor:
👍
schrodingers_cat
Many lefties have been dunking on Nancy Pelosi for a while now and she has been the target of many conspiracy theories on the Red Rose left and Do Something Twitter for years now.
Sarah Doomzior is one name I can think of the bat, who has floated crazy conspiracy theories about the House Speaker
Kay
@Geminid:
But this doesn’t make any sense. If Democrats never get covered by media no matter what they do and repeating themes doesn’t matter then that should hold true for BOTH Social Security and the threat of violent facism.
schrodingers_cat
@Kay: I am so old that I remember Taibbi being lionized on this very blog’s front pages and many other leftie outlets for his innumerate rants about Goldman Sachs and the 2008 financial crisis.
And Greenwald for his role in the Snowden saga.
ETA: And those of us who knew that these two were shitty and unreliable were vilified by the so called great politics knowers.
Kay
@schrodingers_cat:
Innumerate is right. That’s how I knew he was a fraud.
One can pay for their substacks or just read Ted Cruz and Jeb Bush on Twitter :)
Freddie DeBoer, who used to post here on Balloon Juice, writes about public education as if he’s discovering some overlooked and CANCELLED “truth” when actually what he supports is Jeb Bush’s agenda.
I don’t think they read a lot or maybe listen at all? How could you not see this?
jonas
@Baud: I would say probably Venezuela in 2002.
Mimi haha
@Kay: I blame the Reagan era GOP for closing the asylums* and letting people as ill as Ye to wander the streets.
*Not that many? most? of the facilities didn’t needed overhauling, they were just better than nothing as they were.
Geminid
@Suzanne: These faction fights are waged by the outside advocates of what they believe are Democratic factions. Perhaps because they are doers and not talkers, Democratic office holders have much more consensus than the advocates who speak for them.
schrodingers_cat
Word.
Kay
@Mimi haha:
He’s no longer unusual among the GOP though. Their candidate for governor in Pennsylvania is also a nutty anti-semite as are (I would assume) the GOP base who are voting for him. They either are anti-semites or they don’t object to it.
Any of these people would proudly wear a “White Lives Matter” shirt- that’s where West got it from. It’s not new or unique or “contrarian”. They’re just Republicans.
Kay
@schrodingers_cat:
I actually agree with DeBoer on standardized tests. I think they can be valuable for equity- they can level the playing field because they can be an objective measure and a lot of measures are subjective so therefore vulnerable to bias. But I recognize that my Bold Contrarianism on standardized tests is IDENTICAL to the federal government’s position of the last 30 years, so therefore not bold or contrary at all.
Tulsi Gabbard thinks trans people are icky and should be invisible. She has that in common with the GOP base where I live. Ordinary Right wing opinion.
Betty Cracker
@Kay: Over the weekend, someone projected “Kanye was right about the Jews” on a structure inside the stadium where the FL-GA football game was being played, and neo-Nazis hung banners with that slogan plus “Honk if you know Jews are the problem” off the I-10 overpass in Jacksonville (where the game was played).
Weird how all the not-Republican contrarians have followed the party they are definitely not affiliated with right down the antisemitic, fascist rat hole.
Gin & Tonic
Meanwhile, 80% of homes in Kyiv have no water today, because russia is using cruise missiles to destroy civilian infrastructure. Unable to prevail on the battlefield, they choose to commit war crimes in one of Europe’s capital cities. Yet inexplicably they remain a permanent member of the UN Security Council.
Kay
@Betty Cracker:
How is this different than Kanye West? ON the payroll – mainstream GOP campaign. West is not only a mainstream, ordinary Republican, he could be one of their Senate candidates.
skerry
@Gin & Tonic: I agree. What does it take to remove Russia from the Security Council?
Geminid
@Kay: I did not say Democrats never get covered by media no matter what. I pointed out that messaging bandwidth is finite, especially this close to the midterms. There’s a difference.
Gin & Tonic
@skerry: Under the current UN Charter I believe it is impossible.
Eyeroller
@skerry: Probably it would take shutting down the UN, since it’s woven in to the charter. The UN very much reflects the post-WWII world. Some have said they could challenge Russia’s right to occupy the USSR’s seat, but that would probably be difficult to win.
Kay
I think Balloon Juice exagerates the negative effect of online Lefties on the general D vote. I went to a D dinner Thursday (Marcy Kaptur, surprise guest!) and ordinary Democrats are afraid they are going to lose not because of online Lefties on Twitter (none of them read Twitter – most of them wouldn’t know what it is) but because of the overwhelmingly negative reporting by mainstream media.
The longer I stay away from Twitter the more this seems true to me.
Betty Cracker
@Geminid: There’s plenty of factionalism inside the party — among electeds, among voters and among officially and unofficially affiliated groups. They unified sufficiently to oppose open fascism in 2020 and notch some accomplishments in a narrowly divided government, and that’s encouraging, but it’s still a big tent with lots of competing priorities.
Kay
@Geminid:
They can easily weave the two together. It’s not either/or. They just got a class in that with Obama’s speeches in WI and MI. Did you notice his smooth transition between extremism on the Right and Social Security? They’re linked. They all screech about stolen elections and litter boxes in schools because their actual platform is shit that everyone hates.
geg6
@lowtechcyclist:
On my Apple News feed this morning, I got an alert about a podcast or something from them about how there are now all these Dem/left leaning news sites/outlets and how that is a problem because they are trying to influence voters. Horrors! No mention of the zillions of GOP/right leaning news sites/outlets that have been operating for decades to do the exact same thing. WTF?????
Geminid
@Kay: If you would care to share your observations, I would like to know about the role labor unions are playing in Marcy Kaptur’s reelection race. Are they much of a factor?
Baud
@geg6:
They are scared of WaterGirl.
Good.
geg6
@Dorothy A. Winsor:
Saw a recent poll after the debate that had Fetterman up by 5. So no impact due to the debate.
Baud
@Kay:
Lefties aren’t the force they once were IMHO.
Amir Khalid
@Gin & Tonic:
It’s unfortunate that the UN currently has no real way to deal with a bad state actor which has permanent membership on the Security Council. I would love to see certain actions — invasion/conquest of another nation, systematic war crimes, genocide, among others — become grounds for suspending or even revoking that status. Such a provision might have prevented the Russian invasion of Crimea in 2014, or the US invasion of Iraq in 2003.
Jackie
@Baud: Exactly. I’m ignoring all polls – even the ones hinting positives for Dems. I haven’t forgotten ‘18 or ‘20.
gvg
@lowtechcyclist: No. Every time the they fucked around with not raising the debt ceiling they were risking the credit rating of the US, risking a world depression which would be blamed on us, risking our easy capital, our financial power which we have had for so long that most of our citizens don’t realize it doesn’t have to be that way. That is took work on the part of prior generations of American and it can go away. England for instance has trashed a bunch of its prosperity with Brexit and I don’t see a way for them to get it back. they have also impacted Ireland and Scotland, which can’t even easily solve it with independence. Seriously they are such idiots, they don’t know they are idiots, and it has been true for longer than 2009. I think it was all of Bushes term…..2000. Paul Ryan and the young guns that started those debt ceiling hostage showdowns. Thugs and idiots.
Cacti
@Kay: I agree to an extent about standardized tests. But on the other hand, their value as an objective measure is skewed by the fact that upper class kids get the best private test prep that money can buy.
Geminid
@Betty Cracker: Just looking at electeds in the House, there’s much more agreement on policy between the “moderate” New Democrat Caucus and the “liberal” Progressive Caucus than disagreement. By emphasing the differences between the few rightmost members and the few leftmost members of these caucuses, outside advocates would make them out to be opposing power centers but they’re not.
Kay
@Geminid:
They are. Toledo is still very much a union town but she only has a third of Lucas County (Toledo and environs) on this map. Her speech was genuinely interesting- not a traditional stump speech but more of a reflection on how Congress has changed for the worse. She says they can’t get any media coverage for ordinary Congressional business because all of media are (literally) chasing Marjorie Taylor Green. She also told us there is ONE Ohio reporter left covering DC — out of Cleveland- and there used to be FIVE.
I’m having a giant fight with the Steelworkers local here because the Ds meet in their union hall, they have a Right-leaning Trumpist leader they just elected and he’s throwing us out. Fuck them. They get nothing from county Democrats from now on.
TS
@lowtechcyclist:
And when he was not president. Whether he was talking or not talking and anywhere in between. They used to broadcast a crowd – for hours – waiting for trump to appear.
Ignoring Biden’s speech was an abysmal failure – just like their current campaign to elect a GOP congress will be.
Barbara
I will be following twitter this week only because I am hooked on Roger Parloff’s real time summary of the first Oath Keepers’ trial. I am tuning out polls. DKos has a really good site for THINGS YOU CAN DO and I have decided to do texting for a young voters group. I wanted to write postcards but my hands are acting up (ugh — age) and the advantage of texting is that you don’t need to build in time for mail delivery.
It irks me a lot that political reporters think that stewing over polls counts as reporting of any kind. It irks me even more to know that they either don’t know or don’t care that many of these polls are meant to manipulate them into creating a specific narrative, which they happily oblige.
sdhays
@Kay:
This just made me thinking of the old Seinfeld bit:
Of course, if you’re “ok” with anti-semitism (and not “anti-semitism” which offensively equates even tepid criticism of the Israeli government as the same as saying “Hitler was right about some things”), you’re an anti-semite even if you don’t believe you are.
TS
@Betty Cracker:
And they are still getting time/space in the media to spread their lies about what actually happened. The RW b.s. has reached Australia & it is hard to believe some of this stupidity is actually reported as one side of the discussion.
schrodingers_cat
@Baud: That I agree with but what I don’t like is their undermining the Ds from within. Like that letter signed by Jayapal. Like BS giving interviews bashing Ds weeks before the election.
They lack the strength to do anything constructive but enough to be a nuisance to other elected Ds
Also, the BS left has a problem with both racism and misogyny. They seem to be comfortable with both.
Kay
@Cacti:
That’s true but it would be easy to remedy- pay for low income students prep. Some of the prep CLAIMS seem exaggerated too- they’re picking up a point or two with paid test prep where I live but it isn’t giving them 5 or something. They’re not going from a 25 on the ACT to a 30. They’re going from a 28 to a 29.
OTOH the “test” people went crazy with too many tests and overvaluing them so the backlash was inevitable and is mostly their fault. I saw it because I had kids in one public school system over a long period of years- every single year, more tests. I think we end up at some compromise- tests are useful but not the be-all.
Matt McIrvin
@Suzanne: Liberals tend to find cheering “go team” just because it’s our team a little dirty. It doesn’t feel clever or principled. But often they prioritize being clever or principled over winning strategy.
Geminid
@Kay: That was a dumb decision by the Steelworkers official. He would have done better to keep the Democrats and invited the Republicans to meet there too. They need allies, not enemies. But the radicals have thrown pragmatism out the window.
Kay
@Geminid:
The Republicans meet literally in the offices of a local community nonprofit that is “fancy” – it’s what fancy people in town give to :)
I haven’t gotten that worked up in ages- I was furious. We went thru this same thing with the UAW local 20 years ago but they’ve come back to us. It was the GOP opposition to the auto bailouts that got them back. I hold a grudge so I still don’t trust them :)
lowtechcyclist
@gvg:
When did this happen before 2011? They didn’t have the power in 2009-2010, and they didn’t try it during Bush Jr. because they weren’t going to undermine their own President. During the Clinton Administration, they shut down the government twice, but I don’t recall them seriously threatening to not raise the debt ceiling. And during the Reagan and Bush Sr. presidencies, again, they wouldn’t have kneecapped their own President.
Jackie
@Jackie: I meant ‘16. Not ‘18. Need more coffee!
Suzanne
@Matt McIrvin: Agreed.
I think a lot of it is our greater appreciation for expertise. It leads our thought leaders to want to become experts on topics — which is good — but that’s hard. The tendency is real to substitute a “Wellllll, AKTSHULLY…..”.
As someone who literally participates in architecture and development, I see this allllllll the time. So many SMART GUYS have lots of opinions about which they know very little. It’s painful.
BlueGuitarist
@Baud:
Word
Soprano2
Like NPR’s daily story about how awful inflation is where they rarely mention that it’s a worldwide problem that’s a lot worse in most other countries. I think NPR Is afraid people are going to forget about inflation if they don’t do a story on it every single day.
Kay
This is so sad. If they asked me for legal advice I would have to tell them what I believe – that they should not risk voting because DeSantis will throw them in jail if they do. I think any truly client-centered lawyer would have to tell them that. They come first and there’s too much risk to their liberty, well being, family, etc in this scenario where we have this lawless far Right government that is targeting them for prosecution.
You can’t ask them to be maryrs for the cause of democracy in the US and I certainly can’t tell them to do it.
WaterGirl
@Gin & Tonic: if no one is responding to this comment, it may be that everyone feels like I do. What Russia is doing is so impossibly wrong, and I feel that we need to figure out some way to stop it, but I have no solution for it.
Kay
@Soprano2:
My husband listens to NPR – I don’t- but I was with him in his car and heard them the other day. I was pleasantly suprised at how even handed they were.
Local political activists – people who would attend a Party dinner- are often VERY locally focused. So at the dinner last week they were complaining about Letters to the Editor and how we didn’t have enough D’s writing. They want me, specifically, to write them. I have in the past but it’s a pain in the ass because a lot of my clients are Republicans and they give me shit, also I have some genuine anxiety about violence since 2016. It’s riskier now. We’ve already had a brick thrown thru – AT- window of the law office – double pane glass so weaklings didn’t even break both panes – and I had an incident with a Trump fanatic in a truck who was trying to hurt me.
schrodingers_cat
@Kay: Be safe. That must have been scary.
UncleEbeneezer
@Geminid: I just discovered him the other day and was pleasantly surprised. Usually “DemSoc” is a red flag for me, but he seems very sensible and committed to promoting the Dem Party rather than shitting on it and playing BothSides bullshit.
Betty Cracker
@Kay: It’s working exactly as planned. It’s also no accident that something like 13 of the 18 people DeSantis directed the cops to arrest were black and that he held the news conference to announce the arrests in Broward Co., the bluest in the state, while surrounded by county sheriffs.
RaflW
I’ve said it before, but it bears repeating: Corporate donors are giving millions to the party that is openly threatening a massive bond default that will throw global credit markets into chaos.
Business leaders either a) don’t give a shit, b) are so incredibly stupid they don’t see this, and/or c) absurdly think their millions will actually get MAGAs in Congress to take their calls saying “don’t default!” after the soft rolling coup gets under way. (Choose all that apply.)
eta: Coup is optional, based in part on voting now thru Nov 8. I’m not assuming the GOP will win!!
SFAW
@Baud:
Earlier this year (and continuing): the US has been supporting Ukraine’s invasion of Russia, using Ukraine as a proxy coup-catalyst.
UncleEbeneezer
Happy Halloween everyone. So as I mentioned in the Medium Cool thread, late last night, I watched the Netflix horror movie Barbarian and it was WILD!!! It was a dark and stormy night and a young woman shows up at her AirBnB only to find a man is already in it due to a booking mix up. It’s too late and rainy for her to go anywhere else and she has a job interview in the morning. Anyways, that’s the setup but from there it goes in some really crazy directions that I won’t spoil. There’s a bit of gore and violence but it is mostly a movie that kept me in a constant state of suspense. I was literally shifting in my seat for most of the movie as it keeps the tension building brilliantly. If you are looking for a good scary movie, I recommend this one for sure. Scariest movie I’ve seen in awhile. It has some similarities to a couple of excellent horror movies from the past 15 years, but I don’t wanna say which because that would be a bit of a spoiler. Anyways, if you are into this sort of thing, enjoy!
zhena gogolia
@SFAW: You jest, but yesterday in church someone asked for prayers about the rising antisemitism and fascism in the US and in the Ukraine. (Yes, the “the” was included.)
Baud
@zhena gogolia:
Why is Kanye in Ukraine?
Kay
@Betty Cracker:
It breaks my heart because they’re in such a trap. I couldn’t get them out of it. I coud review the requirements for voting but I would have to tell them that I can’t protect them from an entire, corrupt state apparatus that wants to imprison them. I assume most of them are just ordinary not-very-engaged voters. I’m the fanatic. They just want to vote and be left alone.
A lot of what lawyers do for people is tell them how things work- not just in terms of the state code but real risks and downsides. In my view there is too much downside personal risk for a person with a criminal record to vote in Florida. If they want to vote they need to move to a less corrupt state. It’s that simple.
Kay
@Betty Cracker:
I compare OH and FL a lot on terms of corruption, BTW. Ohio too has had a real explosion in corruption as it went conservative. I do think our VOTING is better than yours though, still lawful and not as corrupted- while you have much better local media – you still have real newspapers. Also Florida has excellent sunshine laws.
Local newspapers are holding FL back from wholesale, systemic corruption. I envy you them.
NotMax
Right back atcha.
:)
Ksmiami
@Gin & Tonic: we need to destroy Russia. Like hello people, this nation is a threat to everyone.
Kay
@schrodingers_cat:
The office thing was not scary – I thought initially the crazing on the glass was a frost pattern when I got in to work. Such an idiot- look at the lovely frost pattern! We made a police report and insurance covered the damage. The windows are expensive – I chose them- they’re beautiful but I spent too much.
The truck incident was scary but again my slowness or cluelessness saved me. By the time I figured out he intended to HIT ME with his truck it was over. I was thinking about something else :)
I need “situational awareness”, Adam might say. I am distracted.
Ksmiami
@WaterGirl: destroy their military in Ukraine and Belorussia, blockade Iran.
Geminid
@UncleEbeneezer: I would describe Paulauski as a “pragmatic progressive,” as former Black Panther Denise Oliver-Velez describes herself.
Kay
@schrodingers_cat:
Police found small scissors with curved tips in the parking lot next to the brick. Like medical scissors, maybe. Designed to hold, lock and cut. That has stumped me ever since.
Matt McIrvin
@Ksmiami: I know, let’s launch all the ICBMs right now!
It’d destroy the US and kill nearly everyone else in the world too, but you can’t make an omelette without breaking some eggs. Imagine the carbon footprint reduction.
“We begin bombing in five minutes!” –Ronald Reagan
PJ
@UncleEbeneezer: Funny, I also saw it last night and thought it was terrible. It does have the requisite “scares”, but the plot relies entirely on the characters doing stupid things no one would do. It had the potential to be interesting – there’s a superficial attempt to address sexual violence – but the movie is really just interested in having people chased by a monster. If that’s your thing, well, enjoy.
Betty Cracker
@Kay: Florida still does have some great dailies, and even the ones I used to think of as “conservative,” e.g., the Orlando Sentinel, are exposing the corruption and trying to clue voters in on what’s happening right under their noses. I hope it works, but everyone who analyzes this stuff for a living seems to think Republicans will win convincingly across the board — exceeding previous margins, even.
My sense has been that we’re a bluer state than recent elections indicate, but the truth is that back when Democrats were competitive, they were mostly blue dogs (and even Dixiecrats when I was a kid). In this century, Dems who hung on for a while were blue dog incumbents (Nelson). Obama won the state twice, but he was a once-in-a-generation talent. I suspect I’ll have to ratchet my expectations down, which sucks.
Brit in Chicago
@Cacti: I like to think that people in the US DoD have been talking to their opposite numbers in Brazil, and urging them to respect the democratic process. What little information there is, suggests that they will (which, is, of course, no guarantee).
Soprano2
@Kay: They can be even-handed, and they’re better than most, but this is my particular gripe. It seems that they cannot let a day go by without having at least one story about how terrible inflation is, with interviews with people who are negatively affected. I’m not sure there’s any other issue where they just pound on it day after day after day like that.
rikyrah
@Kay:
They continue to be people that Harriet Tubman would have shot.
Kristine
@evap: Yup.
Geminid
@Betty Cracker: Blue Dogs Stephanie Murphy and Charlie Crist flipped Florida seats in the last decade, part of a replacement of the older conservative rural district Blue Dogs by younger suburban district moderates. But those two cross-affiiiate with the New Democrat Caucus, so I guess you could call them New Blue Democrat Dogs.
Paul in KY
@Kay: West is just a garden variety rich guy who favours GQPers. He just happens to be flamboyant with his media presence.
lowtechcyclist
@Kay:
Whatever the voters of Florida meant when they overwhelmingly passed Question 4 several years ago, there surely can be no doubt that they didn’t intend anything like this shitshow.
One would think the current mess could be challenged on that basis alone, that however Florida wanted to interpret Question 4, leaving potential voters in a state of uncertainty about whether they could vote was a clear-cut violation of Question 4.
taumaturgo
@Baud: Venezuela and Bolivia
Uncle Cosmo
@Gin & Tonic: @Eyeroller: This article disagrees with you both. I do not argue it is correct, merely point out that there is a different opinion out there.
Could the US simply expel Russia’s entire UN delegation from its territory, table an expulsion motion in the SC – in effect recreating the situation in 1950 when the USSR was boycotting the SC and the US used the opportunity to push through enabling legislation for the UN “police action” in Korea – and dare any of the other permanent members (looking at you, China) to veto it? (Might not want to open that can of worms though – what if the GA votes to relocate the UN out of US territory?)
UncleEbeneezer
@PJ: Characters in horror movies aren’t supposed to do the smart/rational thing. They are supposed to do the things we are all screaming “don’t do that.” That’s kind of the point of horror movies, imo. Anyways, I enjoyed it a lot. I also started watching The Rental, but got irritated by the characters and gave up on it after 20 minutes.
Geminid
@Uncle Cosmo: I think China would certainly veto such a motion.
It would have even less chance of passing than the Ravens have of winning the AFC championship!
WaterGirl
@Ksmiami: Sorry, but with your frequent violent statements, I am not looking to you for advice.
Betty Cracker
@Geminid: I meant statewide candidates, not individual House districts, which vary greatly depending on location in Florida (and every other state). Nikki Fried is currently the only statewide elected Dem, and her 2018 win was arguably a fluke because of infighting among conservative factions (establishment vs. MAGA chuds).
schrodingers_cat
@Kay: The truck incident is straight out of a spy novel. Be careful out there. When I was a grad student someone shattered my car’s windshield with a BB gun. I was not in the car, it was parked. The police never found out who did it. That was a bit unnerving.
Geminid
@Betty Cracker: Do you think Nikki Fried will come back and win statewide office again? She’s still in her 40s I think. Florida is a reddish purple, but it doesn’t seem to be breaking solid Republican yet. I guess we’ll know more in 9 days about the direction it’s moving.
Betty Cracker
@Geminid: Good question — I don’t know. I like Fried, but she wouldn’t have been my first choice if starting with a blank page. She’s got some problematic issues in her past that Republicans can exploit, and she really didn’t have much of a statewide profile going in, though I believe she was the best ag commish we’d had in ages. Her gubernatorial campaign laid the groundwork for the future, maybe.
I thought Fried was the better choice of the two when it came down to Fried and Crist because Crist has already lost to a Republican monster, and I thought Fried was better at punching back against a bully like DeSantis. But Crist has done better about punching back since sewing up the nomination.
Like you said, we’ll know more soon. I wish I were more optimistic, but it’s possible voters will surprise me. If DeSantis loses against all expectations, I’ll be giddier than I was when Biden tossed the worthless orange meat-sack out! ;-)
SFAW
@zhena gogolia:
Some Foxbot on NextDoor was informing us that the sanctions against Russia are due to either “Ice Cream Boy” (as he unaffectionately refers to President Biden) or the oil companies trying to keep the oil prices high, because Russians are only paying $0.87/gal, and we could be the same, if ANWR and the Pipeline had not been shut down, etc. [I realize that’s only peripherally related to your point.]
Geminid
@Betty Cracker: Friedman ran a credible primary campaign. I would have been torn- they both seemed like good candidates, just in different ways. Crist looks steady and serious, but I think Friedman has pizazz! That might just be a guy thing, though.
Now I’m thinking I want to see Fried take a shot at Rick Scott.
Betty Cracker
@Geminid: I like the idea of a Fried-Scott matchup too! He’s a uniquely awful candidate in ways that align with Fried’s strengths.
Geminid
@Betty Cracker: Nikki versus Ricky . That would make a great reality show!
rikyrah
Palmer Report (@PalmerReport) tweeted at 2:12 AM on Mon, Oct 31, 2022:
1) Why is Mu-k leaking that he might charge money for verification? Warned you that Mu-k would try every obnoxious thing he could think of to get you to quit Twitter, so he and his fellow right wing conspiracy theorists could have it all to themselves. Don’t take his bait.
(https://twitter.com/PalmerReport/status/1586979371797032960?t=67phCmRMCjnys0VK6EO0tA&s=03)
rikyrah
@Kay:
Kay,
horrified to hear about both incidents. Please stay safe.
Ruckus
@lowtechcyclist:
That would be nice and good and it would be expensive.
One of the reasons, maybe the biggest reason TV news is slanted the way it is is who owns the stations, who makes the money off of all of it. faux news is owned by the Murdoch family and it reflects their shitty values. How many other news outlets are owned by people of average wealth? I believe that number is zero. All that advertising is about moving money in one direction and it isn’t your or my pockets. Money is the basis of most human endeviors, it’s how we buy stuff and in a modern society it’s how we survive. It is of course also how some get rich. I’m not saying anything we don’t all know, just putting it out there, money is living, in most of the societies of this planet. And screwing those in the bottom half is an easy way to make a lot of money, because there are a lot of folks in that bottom half. Or bottom 75% more likely.
rikyrah
@Kay:
This is why I say Florida is a Voter Suppressed State.
Everyone of those folks should sue. Sue. Sue.
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
@Kay: Please tell me he was arrested for trying to hit you.
rikyrah
Juan José Ponce Vázquez (@jjponcevazquez) tweeted at 9:04 PM on Sat, Oct 29, 2022:
So do you guys know that The University of Alabama, is trying to get a general education core approved that eliminates the need for students to take a single history course, a single literature course, and also eliminates foreign languages. Madness.
Juan José Ponce Vázquez (@jjponcevazquez) tweeted at 9:04 PM on Sat, Oct 29, 2022:
I should add that they also reduced the need of students to take writing intensive courses from 2 to 1, because you know, student come to college with excellent writing skills that don’t need to develop. Who needs writing anyway?
(https://twitter.com/jjponcevazquez/status/1586539469586448385?t=kzErJsTsdnTINUuWrP3vxQ&s=03)
Kay
@schrodingers_cat:
My daughter was parked at a hospital in Pittsburgh (where she was working) and a police officer left a note on her car w/his number and an odd sum of cash- like 29 dollars. She brought it in to work and the nurses spent the whole shift trying to crack the case :)
She and her husband called the number and talked to him, which is how they found out he was a cop – “I’m married” etc. I thought their approach was hysterical. So reasonable! Let’s call and ask this person WTF is up with this bizarre episode!
Paul in KY
@SFAW: I would just laugh derisively at him
Edit: Thought it was someone yapping at you in meatspace. My bad.
Ruckus
@Gin & Tonic:
The words permanent member is a hard sticking point. As others have pointed out this stems from the original concept and setup of the UN. And I think to remove the permanence from Russia would likely take a positive vote from every other member of the UN and would likely piss off vlad, a person already seemingly completely deranged and with way too many nuclear weapons at his disposal.
It is a better world with the UN but it is still possible to be a very unstable world with one deranged idiot in charge of a fair number of nuclear weapons. Having been stationed on a ship that possibly carried nuclear weapons, during a war, I am very aware that these are parlous times, and have been for the entire lives of the vast majority of the living.
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
@Betty Cracker: I know the red trend in Florida is disappointing because it is your home. Missouri used to be a purple state and now it is much deeper red than Florida. That has been so depressing for me. The thing is that I think Florida is going to be a harder place to live going forward because of climate change and the cost of insurance. There are definitely safer places to live. Like Missouri. Could we convince all the Florida Dems to relocate here, so we drive the GOP out of office and I get my state back?
Joe Falco
Apologies if anyone has already shown this. It’s a barely past one-minute takedown of Walker in the most passionate way possible: https://twitter.com/QJames/status/1586833202764812292?t=NBM_Exb1ymxeQ5XnkoXSGg&s=19
Citizen Alan
@UncleEbeneezer: One of my favorite bits from cabin in the woods was when the doomed college kids barricaded themselves in the cabin and immediately started making sensible plans for self defense. And then the villains running the whole horror movie scenario simply pumped some kind of gas in through the air vents to make them do stupid things to get themselves killed.
lowtechcyclist
@Ruckus:
You’d have to explain to me why it would be expensive. There are hundreds of cable TV channels, and clearly not all of them have shitloads of money backing them. So having a cable presence isn’t an expensive thing in and of itself.
At least while gaining an audience, such a channel could basically poach off of everyone else’s news, in terms of the news itself, just running an hour or two behind, maybe a bit closer when there’s breaking news. So they don’t have to have reporters, even, right off the bat. Just talking heads, writers, and editors.
Dan B
@WaterGirl: Ditto.
If punishment and violence worked Ukraine would be part of Russia, trans people would not exist, and there would be no protest in the world.
Ksmiami
@Matt McIrvin: No. just give Ukraine more. And interdict the weapons from Iran. Sorry so many of you are ok with the demolition of Ukraine- I’m willing to help escalate the pressure to accelerate Putin’s losses.. I don’t find it fair that Ukraine continues to be suffering the full weight of this invasion at all.
Dan B
@Ksmiami: Who is okay with the demolition of Ukraine? Names and evidence please.
Dan B
@Ksmiami: Who is okay with the demolition of Ukraine? Names and evidence please.
PaulB
Case in point, with respect to the former:
How, precisely, are we supposed to do that?
Ksmiami
@PaulB: naval blockade. Harassment, counterintelligence moves.
livewyre
I don’t believe you. The extent of your unflinching resolve seems to consist of berating the rest of us for not joining you in spewing empty tough-sounding rhetoric that borders on calling for retaliatory genocide and then walking it back the moment there’s any pressure. It becomes a question of credibility at a certain point. Just how much exaggeration and dissembling do you think is going to slide?
Yutsano
@Ksmiami:
Umm…Iran shares a land border with Russia. What else ya got genius?
PaulB
@Ksmiami: So, you basically want us to go to war with Iran, as well as Russia? “Counterintelligence” might allow you to locate some weapons shipments but you’re going to need boots on the ground and on the sea, as well as the cooperation of half a dozen other area governments, in order to stop those shipments. And you’re still going to miss a lot, even if such an embargo was feasible, which it is not.
Realistically, the only way to make such an “interdiction” work is to bomb the shit out of the factories that are making the weapons systems. And even that would require the cooperation of one or more governments in the region. The fallout from such an attack, a de facto declaration of war, would not be pretty. Accelerating the research, development, and deployment of countermeasures is likely to be a better solution.
At the moment, Russia is losing on pretty much all fronts. Ukraine is beating them on the battlefield, they’re losing the propaganda war, NATO has been strengthened, countries are working feverishly to be rid of the dependence on Russian fossil fuels (and are largely succeeding), and the Russian military has been exposed as a corrupt paper tiger. And that’s not even taking into consideration the longer-term damage that will result from the sanctions and from what has been revealed in this war.
All that said, yes, Russia is still capable of dealing enormous damage to the citizens of Ukraine. Each new day brings new atrocities to light, new attacks on civilian targets, new information on how high the price has been, and continues to be, on those citizens. Were it up to me, all of the Western nations would step up their military and financial support, and I’ve called my various Congresscritters to voice that opinion, as well as throwing in a few bucks here and there as my budget allows.
But I’m not prepared to open a two-front nuclear war with Russia and Iran, not under the current circumstances. If you interpret that to mean that I’m “ok with the demolition of Ukraine,” I don’t see any point in further discussion.
geg6
@rikyrah:
I say let them have it. What is so important about twitter that couldn’t just move to another social media platform? They’ll hate it when it’s just them. Just look at all the sites they were creating for themselves. Nothing much there except a few screaming into the void. They don’t want it for themselves. They want it so they can torture other people.
I’ll never understand why twitter is so important to anyone. It’s the least trafficked high profile social media site. Find something else.
gvg
@lowtechcyclist: 1995